Morning Coffee: 61-year-old Citi banker with $19m pay still not ready to retire; Goldman Sachs bankers no longer career monogamists

efinancialcareers.com:

Given that Paco Ybarra, head of Citi's institutional clients group, wasn't a supporter of working from home during the pandemic, his eagerness to keep on coming into the office at a time when most people might be happy tending the dahlias is perhaps unsurprising.

Citi announced yesterday that 61-year-old Ybarra, who's been at Citi for 36 years and who last year earned $23m, is retiring from Citi. The Financial Times said it was Ybarra's own choice to go, but that it had been reached in discussion with Citi CEO Jane Fraser. That together 'they had reached the decision that it was time to move on.'

Despite the camaraderie, Ybarra doesn't seem very ready to be displaced. He told the FT he doesn't,«plan to disappear,” or think he is,»just going to play golf," but that nor does he know what he will do next. 

Fortunately, Ybarra's existential crisis is being forestalled by the fact that he's not actually leaving Citi until the middle of next year while the «future leadership of Citi's institutional business» is established. Fraser said decisions about this leadership will be «shared» in the coming months. A new structure is possible, but Ybarra will be a bit of a lame duck in the meantime (including, conceivably, in the pre-bonus season). There are intimations that he clashed with Fraser, with whom he vied for the CEO role, over work from home. There are intimations, too, that he's leaving because the institutional clients group has not thrived under his leadership. Profits in the business fell 44% year-on-year in the second quarter.

Separately, there was a time when people who joined Goldman Sachs stayed at Goldman Sachs until the end of their careers, when they did an Ybarra and retired only semi-voluntarily. The FT suggests